The Kirchick/Cato/Reason Connection

Since the newsletter story broke there's been a very unusual friendliness between Jamie Kirchick and the guys over at Reason. Here's what we know for sure:

1. Reason's blog knew about the Kirchick story before anyone. They put up a teaser the night before, and Reason blogger Brian Doherty claimed that he planned to ask Ron Paul about it after the Jay Leno taping the day before it hit, but couldn't get close enough for a question.

2. Reason and Kirchick have been tag teaming virtually all of the follow-up stories on the newsletters. They were among the first two sources to hone in on Lew Rockwell as the alleged authors. Then today they simultaneously reported having conversations with Tom Lizardo, Paul's chief of staff, about an allegedly suppressed statement from the campaign fingering Rockwell.

QUESTION: why is a supposedly "libertarian" outfit like Reason apparently so close to a liberal statist publication like the New Republic, and particularly its writer Jamie Kirchick?

Here's what a little sleuthing around the net reveals:

It turns out that Jamie Kirchick and Reason blogger Dave Weigel (co-author of the most recent Reason hit piece) are both officers of a Facebook group called
"Inside Washington Weekly." This group has its own podcast website (http://www.americasfuture.org/podcast/iww/) where, not surprisingly, the newsletter story is the topic of the week.

Kirchick and Weigel also have a bit of banter back and forth on their facebook messageboards about this story, plus some predating it where they exchange notes on political stories. Examples...

Jamie Kirchick (Yale) wrote
at 1:02am yesterday
is that an issue of the "Ron Paul Survival Report" he's holding up?

Jamie Kirchick (Yale) wrote
at 7:16pm on July 2nd, 2007
RE: Miliband. That's a very bad thing. The only reason I joined that group is because I can't stand Gordon Brown. But Miliband as Foreign Secretary was not a good move.

Kirchick may also have connections with the folks at Cato, particularly Tom Palmer and David Boaz - two of the most vocal Paul bashers there. The evidence here is more circumstantial but it's worth mentioning:

1. There are rumors all over the web that Kirchick and Palmer are friends (e.g. http://www.karendecoster.com/blog/archives/002707.html). This is very plausible because Kirchick and Palmer are both gay political bloggers based in D.C. That's a relatively small group of people so the chances that they know each other is very high.

4. Kirchick and the Cato Institute's David Boaz are friends on Facebook.

Taken collectively, these records establish that the relationship between Kirchick and Reason/Cato predates the newsletter story substantially. Furthermore, Kirchick is apparently friends with several of the primary authors of the Reason and Cato hits on Ron Paul and appears to be actively exchanging notes with them on the story as it develops.

I'm not an expert on all this Cato/Reason/TNR stuff, but it did strike me as odd that TNR was able to get their hands on so many of the letters. I don't know how widely they were distributed originally, but it would seem that only a few individuals would still have them (I don't keep 20 year old pamphlets laying around). So it stands to reason that TNR got them from someone within the Cato/Reason camp.

1. The author was writing a piece about the libertarian candidate Ron Paul. before the piece was published, he called/emailed Ron Paul himself, people from Cato, reason, known libertarians,etc. This is what happens when someone writes a story. If a writer calls you about a story that's coming out, of course you know it's coming out. He was on Tucker, he called people. Reason and other libertarian writers/blogs had addressed the newsletters. So he called people who had already written about it or written about/supported Ron Paul. I'm sure many people knew about it beforehand, including Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell. The TNR piece was no surprise. Plus people in politics in general and especially in DC all know each other. People get leads from the same places and sources- especially when the people are pretty well known in certain circles where it doesn't take much digging.

2. The newsletter was known for years. IIRC it was listed in Ron Paul's Wikipedia entry before he ran for president ( probably the 2001 article, but I don't remember). I came across some of the passages YEARs ago googling "ron paul." And I remember seeing a scanned copy of the issue about the LA Riots online.

3. It's pretty easy to find anything you want, especially with this internet thing. But it was probably old fashioned electronic library and database search. When I went back to college a few years back I had to take a class on research and writing papers. The first thing we learned was how to lookup articles and library contents online. You think a writer doesn't know how to do that? I read a blog/site somewhere that actually showed EXACTLY how someone could find the Ron Paul newsletters by searching libraries. I didn't bookmark it or anything, because I read so many 100s of articles on this stuff and am not obsessed with saving it all.

4. there are some people who say Jamie kirchick is libertarian or libertarian/leaning. Do I think that? Um, I have no clue. I dont know anything about the guy except he is gay and wrote the TNR article. That alone doesnt make one a "'neo."

5. Tom Palmer is a gay writer in DC. He was also the "gay man" in the DC 2nd Amendment case. Jamie kirchik is a gay writer in DC. So of course they will probably both be in the pages on the same gay DC publication.

( my numbers don't correspond to yours, just separating my points.)

Lastly- Guilt by Association- If someone says Ron Paul looks bad ( or more specifically the LRC and LVMI people) because associates link to or associate known racists and anti-semites- people here will ( and rightfully so, I think) say "hey, that doesn't make him a racist, just people he had an article on a site that linked to an article by so and so."

So wouldnt the same standard apply to reason, Cato, and everyone else. FWIW, reason has also linked to racist or "'politically incorrect' writers many times.

Instead of worrying about this stuff. Critique the merits of what's going on- which I might add, includes MANY Ron Paul SUPPORTERS who merely wish the situation were handled differently.

I also wonder if this place should be renamed because apparently a lot of people here want to hurt Ron Paul. When people tried to "clear his name" as not being the author- that is when many here became very upset. it should be a good thing that he didnt write it. And it should be good that supporters have expressed what they thought would help his movement.

Disagreements are fine of course, when there is actual debate and not just baseless name calling and innuendo.

How does the Ron Paul candidacy threaten the journalists, think tankers, and academics who live and work along the Orange Line in Washington, D.C.? The answer is straightforward analysis of economic incentives, with some common cultural patterns thrown in.
Familiarize yourself with the main economic plank of Paul’s platform: eliminating the income tax with no replacement. If it succeeded, most of the friends, fellow partiers, sources, and sex partners of the Orange Line journalists and think tankers would be out of work. Even partial success (for example influencing other candidates into advocating deeper tax cuts to win Paul supporters, or motivating more Congressional candidates to run on an anti-tax and anti-war platform and thus creating a libertarian base in Congress) would harm economic interests in their social circles. Furthermore, there would be far fewer spoils for the lobbyists to lobby over, and fewer important articles for the journalists to write about D.C. politics, so they’d suffer personally as well as socially.
There are also “economic preferences” in politics not reflected in money — desires for power, desires to “change the world”, etc. (These two motivations are easily interchangeable near the Orange Line). D.C. attracts people from all over the country with strong preferences along these lines. These, too, would be hurt by a growing success of anti-tax libertarianism. To the extent Ron Paul succeeded, they would be less able to shut down the madrassas and save Muslim women from the dastardly Muslim male. They’d have less control over oil. They couldn’t provide all Americans with health insurance. And (keeping in mind this is only one of many motivations) they couldn’t provide as much protection for Israel. Generally speaking, practically everybody who came D.C. did so to get the federal government to solve various problems they are passionate about. They feel very strongly about these: much more strongly on average than people who do not live near the Orange Line. Success by Ron Paul or his acolytes would start stripping away from them the power they believe they need to solve these problems.
Remember, Paul ranks right up there with McCain, Huckabee and Romney for the 18-29 year old vote. Paul has come very close to winning a plurality of that vote in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan, ranking far ahead of Thompson and Giuliani for the young vote in all three. Paul ranks ahead of _all_ the other Republican candidates in Internet searches and search results. Contrary to myth this represents not “spam” but just the high concentration of Paul supporters on the Internet, comparable to the high concentration of Democrats in the mainstream media (MSM). Both the Internet and MSM are unrepresentative slices of American political opinion.
But the Internet is growing at the expense of the MSM and Paul represents a large chunk of the future of Republican politics. The MSM, including its political bureaus along the Orange Line, finds the Internet threatening. Orange Line bureaucrats think of “radical” libertarians (i.e. those who would eliminate the income tax with no replacement) as maniacs out to destroy their jobs. Ron Paul brings these two fears together.
Moving beyond economic incentives and to human cultural patterns, the Orange Line crowd are a tribe, a monoculture defending itself from an alien tribe that is hostile to them, namely libertarians who don’t like how the federal tribe makes it’s living (via skimming off their paychecks). It’s tribal warfare.
All in all, it would be extremely surprising if the Orange Line did _not_ try to attack Paul. The only surprising thing for me has been to observe how much Orange Line “libertarians” are culturally aligned with the Orange Line rather than with anti-government libertarians.
This analysis has been a straightforward matter of economic incentives with some common human cultural patterns thrown into the mix. This economic analysis gets obscured because, on the one hand, those not privy to the workings of D.C. can only describe it metaphorically in terms of conspiracy theories. The Orange Liners laugh them off the stage. But the economic analyses in their rough form sound a bit like the conspiracy theories, so they too are shouted down by the bullhorns of the Oranger Liners and those who parrot their authoritative opinions. They are laughed off as “conspiracy theory” before the analysis can even start to begin. Most of the MSM when it comes to political issues, and even much of the “alternative media” like Reason Magazine and the Orange Line bloggers, are part of the Orange Line culture. Using these Orange Line bullhorns to make fun of or smear independent thought and independent sources of political power is one of the main levers of federal power.

Here is an anatomy of the spread of the smear campaign against Ron Paul just prior to and on the crucial “king-making” New Hampshire primary day, January 8th (all times are EDT; the polls closed at 8 pm EDT):
January 7th, 7:33 pm — Matt Welch (Reason Magazine) discusses the plan to smear Ron Paul on New Hampshire primary day. In a later edit, Welch strikes out the actual TNR/Reason plan (to post the piece at midnight, the exact time the New Hampshire polls opened, and not post the actual newsletters until the afternoon of the primary) and substitutes “tommorrow afternoon”. But he failed to strike out Reason’s part in the plan: “More to come from here after the gong strikes midnight.”
January 8th, 12:01 AM — Jamie Kirchick’s anti-Paul hit piece, many weeks in preparation at the request of his boss Marty Peretz at The New Republic, and featuring featuring many out-of-context quotes from Paul’s old newsletter (which have long been public knowledge and which Paul long ago denied writing) and descriptions of Paul and his associates as “bigoted”, “racist”, “homophobic”, and “anti-Semitic”, etc. is posted at The New Republic.

featuring featuring many out-of-context quotes from Paul’s old newsletter (which have long been public knowledge and which Paul long ago denied writing) and descriptions of Paul and his associates as “bigoted”, “racist”, “homophobic”, and “anti-Semitic”, etc. is posted at The New Republic.
11:03 AM – Daniel Koffler (Pajamas Media, formerly at Reason)
“A damning New Republic expose on Ron Paul shows the “libertarian” Republican candidate to be a racist, a homophobe and an anti-Semite. Will his diehard supporters continue to defend a man who called Martin Luther King a gay pedophile? Daniel Koffler, a former Paul sympathizer, has a compendium of the Texas congressman’s creepiest hits, pulled straight from his decades-old newsletter.”
3:30 pm — Andrew Sullivan (The Atlantic, formerly editor of The New Republic) — “They are a repellent series of tracts, full of truly appalling bigotry.”
3:46 pm — David Wiegel (Reason) Wiegel praises Kirchick’s piece as “explosive” and after a brief converstation with a harried Paul, grossly mischaracterizes Ron Paul’s position as “Paul’s position is basically that he wrote the newsletters he stands by and someone else wrote the stuff he has disowned.”
3:48 pm — Nick Gillespie (Reason) “I’ve got to say that The New Republic article detailing tons of racist and homophobic comments from Paul newsletters is really stunning. As former reason intern Dan Koffler documents here, there is no shortage of truly odious material that is simply jaw-dropping.”
4:43 pm — David Bernstein (Volokh Conspiracy/George Mason University) “..it’s disturbing in and of itself that the kind of people who write such things would want to associate themselves with Paul’s name, and the kind of people who enjoy reading such things would subscribe to these newsletters because they admire Paul.” Here’s David’s web page at GMU.
(before 5 pm) — Arnold Kling (Econglog/George Mason University) — Repeats the worst quotes out of context and without explanation.
5:17 pm — Dale Carpenter (Volokh Conspiracy/University of Minnesota) – “A damning indictment of Ron Paul.”
Oddly enough, all these people with the exception of the tardiest, Dale Carpenter, live or work near the Orange Line subway (Metro) west of the capitol building in Washington, D.C. On the Orange Line, with occasional short side trips on some other lines, you can get to The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Reason Magazine, George Mason University, The Federal Triangle, Cato Institute, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle (Red Line), and a number of other homes and work sites of beltway media, politicians, bureaucrats, and “libertarians.” I don’t know how many of these people actually ride the D.C. Metro, but for fun and convenience let’s call this group of smear artists the “Orange Line Mafia”. This group of media pundits and bloggers has developed a large following among actual libertarians because they are an integral part of D.C. social circles and darlings of the mainstream media, who often “link” to the blogs of these “libertarians” from their various media formats. Libertarians who watch or read MSM thus often first discover “libertarianism” on the net in the writings of The Atlantic, Reason, Cato, Volokh Conspiracy, and other Orange Line Mafia outlets, and think that they are representative of people who actually value liberty.

If a person cared about liberty, why would they be eager to mindlessly repeat smears about the most popular libertarian candidate in decades on the very day of the most crucial “king-making” primary in the United States? Yet that is exactly what a number of popular “libertarian” bloggers did that day. The Ron Paul Newsletters are voluminous and even a small fraction of them could not possibly be read in the very few hours that passed between the posting of the actual newsletters (the afternoon of the 8th) and the smear campaigners’ posts (also the afternoon of the 8th). All of these “hit and run” blog posts, except Kirchick’s original, must then be based on Kirchik’s piece rather than on actual reading and analysis of the newsletters. Clearly the purpose of these posts was not to initiate a thoughtful discussion of the newsletters, it was to spin libertarian voters on the most crucial election day short of the November general elections.

Beltway libertarians use Congressman's old newsletters as excuse for dumping on him. Some perspective.

by Phil Manger
(Libertarian)
I guess we should have expected it.
The Beltway libertarians, those polished public intellectuals at Cato and Reason, have been falling all over themselves the past few days in an effort to distance themselves from Ron Paul following the "outing" of his old newsletters last week by The New Republic. Not that they were ever that close to begin with. The Cato gang never liked Dr. Paul, and the folks at Reason only warmed up to him after his campaign began to catch fire on the internet. Now, their blogs are full of I-told-you-sos, denunciations, and warnings of dire consequences for libertarianism.
Typical of these was David Boaz, Cato's executive vice-president, who told the world that "...over the past few months a lot of people have been asking why writers at the Cato Institute seemed to display a lack of interest in or enthusiasm for the Paul campaign. Well, now you know." Even Radley Balko, a Reason editor and former Cato policy analyst whose research on police misconduct made him one of the few shining lights among the Beltway libertarians in recent years, has joined the lynch mob. You can find links to dozens of other similar comments here.
Interestingly, all of them say they don't believe Dr. Paul is really a racist, and most of them say they believe him when he says he didn't write the articles in question. In fact, their real target seems to be something they call paleolibertarianism, a branch of libertarianism that has its center of gravity at the Ludwig von Mises Institute. And the man they really seem to loathe is the institute's president, Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. Ron Paul is merely collateral damage.
I should point out at this point that I really have no firsthand knowledge of any of the details of the mutual animosity that exists between the Beltway libertarians and the paleos. I only know that it exists and that it runs deep. I was a libertarian activist from the mid-'60s until the early '80s. I then decided to get a life and, except for an occasional blog post or attendance at a meeting, I was pretty much out of it for the next quarter century. It was my son who urged me to support Ron Paul in his run for President. (I didn't deliberately raise him to be a libertarian. Do you suppose it's genetic?) I did a lot of Googling of Ron Paul's name, and...well, here I am.
So, what about those newsletters? According to The New Republic article, the newsletters reveal "decades worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews, and gays". Actually, that's a gross overstatement. It's more like a careless phrase or choice of words here and there — sometimes very careless, and sometimes even mean.
What the newsletters remind me of is the "gold bug" marketing in the early '70s. The "gold bugs" — those who believed that the dollar was destined to continue to lose value — were a mixed bag: conspiracists, libertarians, John Birchers, survivalists (of both the Left and the Right), racialists, and some who just wanted to turn a quick profit. Following the dollar's devaluation in 1971 a number of businesses and newsletters appeared on the market to capitalize on the uncertainty of the times. They sold their wares, whether precious metals or newsletter subscriptions, by instilling fear and serving up red meat to the gold bugs. I remember attending one precious metals "seminar" in 1974. A black couple was sitting near me. When the speaker got to the part about riots in the cities and a breakdown of civil authority, I could see that the couple were extremely uncomfortable. They left before the end of the presentation.
For whatever reason, Ron Paul has a very bankable name in that market. The International Harry Schultz Letter, the granddaddy of all the gold bug newsletters, prominently features a plug from Dr. Paul on its webpage. So it would make sense that a newsletter bearing Paul's name, aimed at gold bugs or their like, would be profitable.
So, did Ron Paul write that awful stuff posted on TNR's website? I’m a former writer and editor and also a former college professor who got to be pretty good at sniffing out plagiarism in student papers, and I have to say I very much doubt it. It isn’t at all like Ron Paul’s style of writing (you can go to the Mises Institute website, where there is an extensive archive of Dr. Paul’s writings, if you don’t believe me), and there’s nothing in his voting record over 10 terms in Congress to suggest those are his views. I don't find it at all implausible that someone would use his name to sell subscriptions to a newsletter written and edited by others.
But I agree with Alex Wallenwein and Bill Westmiller that we need to know who did write that objectionable material so that we can move on. Otherwise, this stuff will come up again and again.
However, I am not so naive as to think that this will mollify the Beltway libertarians. In their writings on this controversy, I've detected a barely suppressed undercurrent of glee, as if they're trying to keep from shouting "Aha! Gotcha now!" They say they are concerned about what all this is doing to the reputation of libertarianism — although, it seems to me they're more concerned about what it's doing to their own standing in Georgetown — but I think they doth protest too much.
If the Beltway libertarians are really concerned about the reputation of libertarianism, let them take a look at what they're saying about Ron Paul over on the Left. Although they like his antiwar, pro-freedom message, a lot of the bloggers over there don't care for the fact that he's a libertarian. You see, they equate libertarianism with the Cato Institute. And to them, Cato is just another D. C. think tank laboring in the service of the corporate elites.
Topic: Political Correctness
Playing the racism card

It all depends on whose ox is being gored.

by Phil Manger
(Libertarian)
Try, for just a minute, to imagine the following scenario. The New Republic, or some other stronghold of neocondom, has just discovered the website of the church Ron Paul has been attending for the last 20 years. At the very top of the site's home page is the following statement:
We are a congregation which is Unashamedly White and Unapologetically Christian...Our roots in the White religious experience and tradition are deep, lasting and permanent. We are a European people, and remain "true to our native land", the mother continent, the cradle of civilization...We constantly affirm our trust in God through cultural expression of a White worship service and ministries which address the White Community.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to guess what would follow. The story would be on all the evening newscasts, the neocon and Beltway libertarian talking heads would be all over the cable news channels expressing their disgust, and even the paleolibertarians would jump ship. No explanation he could offer would be acceptable. Ron Paul's campaign would be dead.
But if you just change "White" to "Black" and "European" to "African" you'll have the exact words that appear at the top of the home page of the website of the Trinity United Church of Christ, the Chicago church that Barack Obama has been attending faithfully for the past 20 years. Yet, so far the media — with the exception of a few conservative columnists — have given Obama a pass on his connection with this church.
The terms "racism" and "racist" are thrown around so much these days that they have effectively lost all meaning. Well, not all meaning. In fact it's very simple if you just remember that racism is what lies at the root of one's opponents' thoughts and actions, while one's own thoughts and actions arise from only the purest of motives.
The charge of "racism" is most often made by the Left against the Right. However, increasingly — and distressingly — conservatives are hurling the "racist" epithet at their opponents on the Left. There are so many examples of this, it is not necessary to provide links to them. Just Google "Alberto Gonzales" and "racist" to find some examples. Or go look up what some neocons have said about Ron Paul.
When Wolf Blitzer was questioning him about his old newsletters on CNN last week, Dr. Paul said "Libertarians are incapable of being racists, because racism is a collectivist idea". I don't know that I agree with the first part of that statement, but Dr. Paul should be forgiven because he was being ambushed with a question and had only a few minutes to answer it. (A much better exposition of his views on racism can be found on his campaign website.)
I think a libertarian can be a racist because I think anybody can be a racist. I don't mean a hooded, cross-burning, night-riding racist; just someone for whom race is a factor, however minor, in his or her personal decision calculus. Most people naturally prefer the company of people who are like themselves in most ways. They might not require the exclusive company of others like themselves, but they also don't want to associate exclusively with people who are very different.
Thomas Schelling, a Nobel laureate in economics, once proposed a game. Get a roll of pennies, a roll of dimes and a large sheet of paper divided into one-inch squares. Distribute the coins one per square on the sheet of paper, leaving about a third of the spaces empty. Adopt a rule: assume each coin wants at least some proportion — say, a third — of its neighbors to be of the same kind. Now find a coin for which the rule is not satisfied — i.e. less than a third of its neighbors are of the same kind — and move it to a square where it is. Repeat this step until all coins are on squares that satisfy the rule. When you get to this point, you'll find that the pennies have tended to cluster with other pennies, while the dimes are clustered with other dimes.
Under the rule adopted, these coins are very open minded — each is willing to live where up to two-thirds of its neighbors are of another "race". Nevertheless, the end result of this "invisible hand" process is that most end up living where all of their neighbors are the same.
The point of the game is to demonstrate how a pattern of racial segregation can result from the individual decisions of people whom hardly anyone would accuse of being racist. Which is one of the reasons the charge of "racism" is one that is almost impossible to defend against.
A person accused of being a racist can usually clear his or her name with the accuser only by agreeing with the accuser. Last week on The Huffington Post Earl Ofari Hutchinson demanded that Ron Paul issue "a clear and direct public statement...that says I fully support all civil rights laws, will work hard against racial and gender profiling, and will push government economic support initiatives to boost minorities and the poor" as the price for being absolved of the charge of racism.
In other words, the only way the libertarian Dr. Paul can prove he's not a racist is to abandon libertarianism and adopt Hutchinson's statist policy prescriptions. That's like telling a Christian televangelist whose assistant had swindled viewers that repentance and restitution are not enough — he has to renounce Christianity if he wants to be forgiven.
The significant point about libertarians and racism is not that a libertarian can't be a racist; it's that, in a true libertarian society, racism is irrelevant. A libertarian government would not have the authority to enact legislation that favors one racial or ethnic group at the expense of another because it would not have the authority to enact legislation that favors anybody at the expense of another.
Nor would the government have the authority to enact legislation to correct the results of "invisible hand" processes like Schelling's game. In fact, the mere attempt to do so would be not only racist, but futile as well.
An example of the futility and racism inherent in using the police power of the state to correct racial discrimination — intended or otherwise — resulting from individual decisions are laws prohibiting racial discrimination in employment. Since the hiring decision is multidimensional, a racist manager could claim any number of reasons for rejecting an applicant of the "wrong" race. Hence the need for affirmative action if the law is to achieve its desired effect. But, since affirmative action requires basing the hiring decision on race, it is itself racist (and most probably in violation of the law it is meant to enforce).
One of the silliest things a politician or pundit can say is that she/he opposes affirmative action, but supports laws prohibiting racial discrimination in employment. You can't have one without the other. If you don't believe it, consider this: age discrimination is against the law, too, yet it's rampant in the workforce. Just ask any computer programmer over 40. The difference is, there's no affirmative action based on age. Ron Paul is probably the only Presidential candidate in either party who understands this.
There are, of course, people whose attitudes about race go far beyond just feeling more comfortable around people who are like themselves. But is that necessarily something to get alarmed about? As long as they're not harming or threatening anyone else, why should we care? If they choose to act out their hatred by harming people of another race, then the government can act. Otherwise the government is trying to read minds.
Racism and racist are words that, through overuse, have lost their sting. They are what you say when you have nothing else to say. Probably the best thing for all of us would be to banish them from the language. Certainly, they add nothing constructive to political discourse.

Yeah and the article read like every other trash piece about RP (starting with "He won't win the presidency but...") I know he's not likely to win. In fact, IMO it would take a miracle. However I expected a lot more respect for a man who has done more to advance libertarianism in the last year than that magazine has done in its entire existence.
My subscription expired with that issue and I have decided not to renew. Just like John McCain, I think "Washington changed" them as well.

1. The author was writing a piece about the libertarian candidate Ron Paul. before the piece was published, he called/emailed Ron Paul himself, people from Cato, reason, known libertarians,etc. This is what happens when someone writes a story.

Read the evidence more carefully. Kirchick didn't simply call up Reason and Cato out of the blue for comments on a story he was working on. There is extensive evidence on the web that Kirchick is personal friends with key Paul-bashers at Cato and Reason. Their relationships go back for years before this story ever came out. That suggests the friendliness between them on the newsletter story is more a matter of collaboration than the simple call for comments you suggest. Nor is it simply a matter of knowing a couple DC contacts. These guys hang out in the same social circles together. They meet up for political chats over dinner and banter around on each other's facebook message boards.

4. there are some people who say Jamie kirchick is libertarian or libertarian/leaning. Do I think that? Um, I have no clue. I dont know anything about the guy except he is gay and wrote the TNR article. That alone doesnt make one a "'neo."

Kirchick has been on record both publicly and privately supporting Rudy Giuliani's candidacy. It's highly unlikely that a libertarian of any stripe would support Giuliani, the most statist of the GOP candidates running.

1. Some of the people who have been dubbed "right wing hatebags" are not anything of the sort. I genuinely do not think the Ludwig von Mises Institute is the racist hate factory Tom Palmer claims. Their website and publications are full of heavy libertarianism and little more. Those are political attacks by somebody with a personal agenda against them and must be taken with a grain of salt.

2. In the instances where genuine right-wing hatebags are involved (e.g. Don Black of Stormfront) there is absolutely no evidence showing they are close to the Ron Paul campaign. In fact, Paul is openly dismissive of them.

3. By their very nature right wing hatebags are on the fringe periphery of society's political discussions. They have no significant influence over anyone and it simply isn't worth the time trying to research and discredit something that discredits itself on its own. People like Palmer, Boaz, and Kirchick do have influence, by contrast, and they are plainly using it in this case to do harm. That's why they need discrediting.

You know...

...it's not all that hard to get in contact with the folks involved in this story. Instead of mining Facebook for fodder for speculation, someone could ask us.

So, for the curious: Dave Weigel and I know Jamie Kirchick in passing, because DC magazine journalists tend to be acquainted with each other. We haven't "coordinated" anything, though we knew he was getting ready to run a negative story about Dr Paul, and he was aware we were working on a story investigating the authorship of the newsletters. This is not because there is any conspiracy, but because as a matter of professional courtesy, journalists will frequently drop a note to inform each other when a story relevant to issues they cover is about to appear. We have very different political views: Kirchick was a supporter of the Iraq War and of Rudy Giuliani; Dave and I are strongly opposed to both. And while Kirchick is personally hostile to Dr Paul, Dave and I are not. Anyone who read to the end of the story will see that, far from "smearing" him, we have acknowledged that he does not seem to be a racist, but said that his campaign ought to offer a more full explanation in light of some of the questions raised by our investigation.

More generally, I want to ask Paul supporters whether they think the sort of reaction we've seen here is a healthy one. After quite a bit of investigation, we found what I thought was fairly compelling evidence that a group of people who had developed a misguided theory of appealing to racists for support used Dr Paul's name to try out their strategy. There is every indication that Dr Paul is himself no racist, and so we think it is best for the campaign to be more forthcoming about how this happened, not to protect the people responsible, and to say something about why he continues to have them in his inner circle. If the answer is that they have abandoned these ugly views, that will be reassuring, but surely the question merits an answer.

Instead of taking up these substantive questions, I've seen a string of fantastic theories about what our nefarious motivations must be in writing about the story. Well, the New York Times isn't writing about it because they don't care about Ron Paul and regard him as irrelevant. We, on the other hand, have consistently been covering the campaign, and in a way that if not wholly uncritical, I think can only be fairly described as sympathetic. So yes, when a story like this comes up, we will cover that too -- we are journalists, not cheerleaders. If people prefer to believe -- against all evidence, I think -- that we are simply out to get Ron Paul, and that anyone offering criticism must be the Enemy, that's their choice. But I don't think that's a wise approach for any movement to adopt.

We did find the authors, we named them, and we provided the evidence linking them to the newsletters, including a positive ID from a source within the campaign.

Paul's longtime congressional chief of staff, Tom Lizardo, has now gone on the record confirming that the campaign had prepared a statement last week also identifying Lew Rockwell as the person responsible for the newsletters, that Dr Paul had signed off on it, and that campaign chairman Kent Snyder killed it.

Since the facts are no longer really disputable, perhaps this is a good time to move on from railing against the people reporting the story and begin thinking about how to deal with it in a way that is good for both the Paul movement and the philosophy of freedom.

[QUOTE=Julian Sanchez;993231]So, for the curious: Dave Weigel and I know Jamie Kirchick in passing, because DC magazine journalists tend to be acquainted with each other. We haven't "coordinated" anything, though we knew he was getting ready to run a negative story about Dr Paul, and he was aware we were working on a story investigating the authorship of the newsletters. [block]

So in other words, you were coordinating but simply aren't calling it coordination.

This is not because there is any conspiracy, but because as a matter of professional courtesy, journalists will frequently drop a note to inform each other when a story relevant to issues they cover is about to appear.

It's no matter of a "conspiracy," Julian. It's a simple matter of social network analysis, and the fact remains that the social network between you, the other Reason guys, the Cato crowd, and Kirchick significantly affected the way this story rolled out when weighed against what would have been the case in the absence of said social networks. The response time to the story, the succession of cross-commentary between the various sources on new developments in the story, and the collective building upon each other's work that has occurred as it plays out are all affected by your relationship with Kirchick.

Sure, it may be what "journalists" do but that doesn't excuse the fact that it is being done, nor does it mitigate the harmful effects of the "frenzy" that emerges behind the story itself. Case in point:

On the day the story broke Weigel caught up with Ron Paul at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, sprung the Kirchick stuff on him, and got a quick off-the-kuff response that it was "old news" from Paul. I know that many of you are unaware of life outside the world of the internet, but Paul's reaction was completely reasonable. He was campaigning to voters on the busiest election day of the season to date smack in the middle of a schedule that had him criss-crossing the nation on a non stop campaign tour. When Weigel pulled the question about Kirchick on him it was doubtful Paul had even gotten an opportunity to read the full Kirchick piece. Nor is it reasonable to expect that he should have at that point in time. Yet within moments of its posting, Paul's off-the-kuff remarks to Weigel were being roundly condemned around Reason (and moments later Cato) for their supposed inadequacy.

In the New hampshire case the frenzy to get an immediate answer supplanted any rational, coherent, level-headed take on the story. Furthermore, as several bloggers have ably pointed out, the simple fact that your crowd is associated with Kirchick and knew the story was coming altered the way YOU responded to it - particularly the speed with which Reason, Cato and others posted rapid, largely uncritical acceptances of Kirchick's conclusions.

If you disagree try a little thought experiment: Suppose you never knew Kirchick, had never met him in your life and didn't know a thing about him. Nor did you know he was planning this story. You didn't know what sources he had or anything about their supposed contents. Instead, you just woke up one morning, turned on the computer, and there was his story for you to read. Can you honestly say Reason, Cato et al would have reacted the exact same way they did if that was the case? Would they have all posted to an echo chamber of condemnation within the hour of it breaking?

Or would they have taken a deep breath and begun digging into the story at a deeper level - looking for corroboration to what Kirchick says, examining the strength of his interpretation, scrutinizing the weaker portions of his article, and reaching a thorough, informed, and independent conclusion about his article after time and sensibility had worked their course?

Since libertarians are generally more thoughtful than most of the public when dealing with the media, I submit the latter would have been the case. I also submit that the relationship between Kirchick and Reason/Cato is largely the reason why this did not happen, and why we instead got an echo chamber of largely uncritical condemnations of Paul and/or Rockwell within moments of it breaking.

And if you don't think that time and networking with Kirchick made a difference, I urge you to temporarily put aside any personal differences you may have with Justin Raimondo and read his rebuttal of Kirchick that came out today because he gives Kirchick's story the scrutiny that your haste to publish did not allow.

He highlights multiple instances where Kirchick's interpretation of several (though not all) of the quotes was very flawed and very suspect. It is not a far cry to say that in some instances Kirchick was being willfully deceptive about his portrayal of the newsletter content, including but not limited to truncation of the context of some of the quotes that completely altered their meaning into something far worse than they actually were.

And honestly, Julian, I believe you when you say you are not out to "get" Ron Paul like Kirchick is. In my mind, you and Weigel and even some of the Cato folks are innocent of that charge.

But there are other proxy battles being fought behind this story, and like it or not Paul is caught directly in the path of the bullets that are being exchanged. So much as Reason and Cato are feeding this story through the actions I have just described, they are having the effect of exacerbating the damage it does to Paul's campaign - even when you are saying sensible things like your desire to get a stronger response out of the campaign itself.

But in political circles, those are suggestions YOU need to be making TO the campaign. They're suggestions that Reason needs to be passing through the backchannels as "friendly advice," and if it isn't taken it's something that Reason should use is collective clout to impress upon Paul's campaign - again through the backchannels. When you decide to splash it before the world on a front page headline though, you end up harming him and feeding a very negative and ill-conceived media frenzy. You also burn your existing clout with the Paul campaign itself by giving them a reason to see you as a hostile media outlet. You say that you are not and I believe you when you say that, but to the Paul camp you're just another reporter who's working both sides in a way that ends up undermining everything you purport to be seeking by writing the stories that you do.

We did find the authors, we named them, and we provided the evidence linking them to the newsletters, including a positive ID from a source within the campaign.

Sure you did. But you also used unnamed sources, and named some very questionable ones. When you go around padding an article with stuff from Eric Dondero you draw your own credibility under fire. Dondero isn't credible about this. Others may be, including Lizardo.

But if that's the case, stick with Lizardo alone to make your point...or better yet, use your influence with Lizardo, an insider himself, to sway the Paul camp behind the scenes into giving the explanation you think they should give to put this thing to rest. Splashy headlines posted for the world to see only make you look like another hostile media outlet. You're doing your darndest to take a private fight out in the public, and there's no surer way to sink a campaign than that.

Reason, of course, in it’s new incarnation as the official organ of the libertarian movement’s aging hipsters and would-be “cool kids,” vehemently opposes reaching out to middle and working class Americans: that is far too “square” for the black-leather-jacket-wearing Nick Gillespie, formerly associated with something called Suck magazine, and Matt Welch, who was an unknown quantity before getting the job at Reason. Right-wing populism? As far as the Suck-y crowd is concerned, one might as well tout the appeal of “right-wing botulism.” Libertarianism, as understood by the editors of Reason, is all about legalizing methamphetamine, having endless “hook-ups,” and giving mega-corporations tax breaks (so Reason can keep scarfing up those big corporate contributors). The decidedly “square” Dr. Paul—a ten-term Republican congressman from Texas, no less, and a pro-life country doctor of decidedly conservative social views—was and is anathema to Team Suck.

I second the reference to takimag. Justin put the quotes into the paragraphs they came from and all of a sudden the offense disappears. Shocking. Well, maybe the professionally offended class may not be satisfied, but they know where their bread is buttered so I'm not surprised.

Justin Raimondo did a very good piece. He's opposed Paul when they disagree, so he isn't a yes-man for Dr. No.

If you want to call that "coordination," be my guest; we were not collaborating on the stories or holding telecons with sixth-floor at Cato to decide how to respond. If the point is that elements of Kirchick's story were unfair, and some of the comments given their worst possible spin, that's true. But at some point, I think we have to say: Look, there's enough really indefensible stuff here that our first responsibility is to look into it. There are a couple batches of the scanned newsletters up on The New Republic's Web site now. My take is that they are on the whole pretty bad, and Dr Paul seems to agree that they are "small minded" and deserving of repudiation. I will side with him over Justin Raimondo on this point, but people can easily look at the scans and decide for themselves whether they think this is rhetoric worthy of Dr Paul.

Dave can speak for himself as to whether his questioning of Paul was fair, though I'll note that the campaign obviously would have learned what Kirchick was investigating and writing about well before the article appeared, precisely because he would have had to ask them about it as well. And again, we now know that they had been preparing a statement in advance of publication. So I don't think we can say this was a surprise that came out of left field.

And again, I want to ask whether people really identify themselves with the approach taken in the Raimondo column and the DeCoster blog linked above. We have tried to be fair to Dr Paul and to the facts. We have offered criticism where we thought it was merited, but I hope that it has on the whole been measured, and in the spirit of fellow believers in liberty who want to be sure there can be no doubt of the wide chasm separating Dr Paul's principles and ours (to the very great extent that they overlap) from hate and bigotry. What we see at the links above is angry, venomous name-calling, wild fantasies about how I am acting on the paid orders of the "Kochtopus", and absurd (and, I hope needless to say, false) speculations about how Reason is getting ready to purge "pro-Paul" reporters. We may not agree on every point of policy, but I think we do share a fundamentally optimistic vision of a free society. Is this really the face that vision should wear?

We did find the authors, we named them, and we provided the evidence linking them to the newsletters, including a positive ID from a source within the campaign.

You "found the authors?" No,. You accused Lew Rockwell of being the author. He denies it. You have no evidence proving that LR authored it other than you keep saying it is so. Until you provide proof, you're just a gossipmonger.

Originally Posted by Julian Sanchez

Paul's longtime congressional chief of staff, Tom Lizardo, has now gone on the record confirming that the campaign had prepared a statement last week also identifying Lew Rockwell as the person responsible for the newsletters, that Dr Paul had signed off on it, and that campaign chairman Kent Snyder killed it.

Careful use of language there. Responsibility for the newsletters versus author of the offending articles. BIG difference. Thanks for playing and don't forget your consolation prize, Julian!

Lizardo was fired last week.

Originally Posted by Julian Sanchez

Since the facts are no longer really disputable,

You still have not presented any.

Originally Posted by Julian Sanchez

perhaps this is a good time to move on from railing against the people reporting the story

you'd like that, wouldn't ya?

Originally Posted by Julian Sanchez

and begin thinking about how to deal with it in a way that is good for both the Paul movement and the philosophy of freedom.

I am defending the philosophy of freedom. That is why I will never stop refuting the gossipmongering that you and your crew of PC Libertarians who "scramble to attach [your] lips to some ass that will lead [you] to mainstream glory" continue to sling about.

Alright, well, I've said my piece. If that's the sort of "analysis" you prefer to credit, that's your affair. I hope anyone else reading will look at our piece as well as the various attacks and come to their own conclusions.

If you want to call that "coordination," be my guest; we were not collaborating on the stories or holding telecons with sixth-floor at Cato to decide how to respond. If the point is that elements of Kirchick's story were unfair, and some of the comments given their worst possible spin, that's true.

I'm glad you recognize that. Now my next point is that you, and the others at Cato and Reason, if you truly care about the Paul campaign as you say, have a duty to make it absolutely clear that there are problems with Kirchick's article and they are major. This doesn't mean you also have to ignore the worst of the quotes, but when you simply link to Kirchick's stuff and apply an uncritical screen to what he says it casts an impression that you are simply echoing him. In politics, that means everything because the perception of any difference between you and Kirchick disappears entirely.

But at some point, I think we have to say: Look, there's enough really indefensible stuff here that our first responsibility is to look into it. There are a couple batches of the scanned newsletters up on The New Republic's Web site now.

I don't disagree. But you need to take Raimondo's points seriously when he delves into the guts of the newsletters. The truly offensive stuff really boils down to just a handful of the newsletters. Kirchick used those as the core of his article then padded them with other stuff that is far less offensive - including some of it that was willfully misrepresented.

Why is this important? Because even if you take the position that there is bad and indefensible stuff that needs to be addressed, the scope and quantity of that stuff substantially diminishes when it is put into context as Raimondo did. It's a lot easier to respond to 5-6 offensive quotes from 1989-1992 than it is to 30 quotes, many of them not offensive but simply cast that way by a reporter with an agenda, spread from 1978-1996.

And that includes your Rockwell thesis. If we're dealing with 5 or 6 quotes from a period of about 3 years where Rockwell was supposedly in charge that meshes pretty well with Paul's explanation that he had turned the reigns of the newsletter over to subordinates.

All I'm asking, Julian, is that you think some of these things through more carefully. The rush for a splashy story by people who claim to be friends of Paul has done just as much to damage his campaign in this instance as the original Kirchick piece. You are one of the people who has the power to curtail that at least a little bit, so if you truly care about Paul why not do so? And tell Weigel to do the same.

Also I don't disagree that there are problems with the Raimondo blog. For one, it's full of plenty of gratuitous swipes that are just as bad as the people he's attacking. There's a core to it though that you do need to listen to, and that's his stuff challenging the content of Kirchick's thesis. Put the personal stuff aside and ignore the name calling (I know it's hard, but try to do it - you're presumably intelligent enough to not get caught up in that sort of emotion) and read the rest of what he says. Cause right now he's the only big name making a direct challenge to Kirchick's content, and I know that there are others out there who could make that challenge more effectively if they were willing to do so...

Alright, well, I've said my piece. If that's the sort of "analysis" you prefer to credit, that's your affair. I hope anyone else reading will look at our piece as well as the various attacks and come to their own conclusions.

If you want to call that "coordination," be my guest; we were not collaborating on the stories or holding telecons with sixth-floor at Cato to decide how to respond. If the point is that elements of Kirchick's story were unfair, and some of the comments given their worst possible spin, that's true. But at some point, I think we have to say: Look, there's enough really indefensible stuff here that our first responsibility is to look into it. There are a couple batches of the scanned newsletters up on The New Republic's Web site now. My take is that they are on the whole pretty bad, and Dr Paul seems to agree that they are "small minded" and deserving of repudiation. I will side with him over Justin Raimondo on this point, but people can easily look at the scans and decide for themselves whether they think this is rhetoric worthy of Dr Paul.?

My take is that on the whole, they are not all that bad. What's bad, is Reason not standing behind it's name. Instead of putting the quotes in context, Reason chose to run with the, "look at this out of context quote", "and this one too".

Is the rhetoric worthy? Probably not. And yet there is no condemnation by Reason for Kirchick's blatant smear attempt, that pursues a dishonest agenda with claims of rascism, homophobia and anti-semitism.

Originally Posted by Julian Sanchez

And again, I want to ask whether people really identify themselves with the approach taken in the Raimondo column and the DeCoster blog linked above. We have tried to be fair to Dr Paul and to the facts. We have offered criticism where we thought it was merited, but I hope that it has on the whole been measured, and in the spirit of fellow believers in liberty who want to be sure there can be no doubt of the wide chasm separating Dr Paul's principles and ours (to the very great extent that they overlap) from hate and bigotry. What we see at the links above is angry, venomous name-calling, wild fantasies about how I am acting on the paid orders of the "Kochtopus", and absurd (and, I hope needless to say, false) speculations about how Reason is getting ready to purge "pro-Paul" reporters. We may not agree on every point of policy, but I think we do share a fundamentally optimistic vision of a free society. Is this really the face that vision should wear?

Please don't waste our time with "tried to be fair". You either were fair or not.

I hope Reason understands how much it has lost with this, the effect it will have on it's reputation going forward. You're not TNR, or the WSJ. You "claim" to represent a different perspective, and yet when the articles are weighed and measured, there was no significant difference between your magazine's coverage and the MSM, except maybe the lame attempt to insulate Reason's groupthink of soft and convenient libertarianism.

You probably wouldn't even be here today, if you weren't fully aware of the backlash from people with a libertarian ideology. Something tells me, that after all of the distancing and self-righteousness, Reason looked around and realized that the clapping in the auditorium was from the few statists in the balconies.

Bravo! Bravissimo! as the crowd hisses in disgust

Perhaps the disconnect will sink in now. The majority of those with a libertarian streak aren't concerned with being libertine, but actually preserving the opportunity for freedom against the forces of tyranny even if it means fighting tooth and nail.

Fair. A funny and subjective word to use. Shame you didn't choose "honest".

This campaign is about heroes, not cowards. Reply back if you need help finding the Log Out link.

Another major reason for the antipathy to Paul coming from these quarters is his uncompromising opposition to U.S. foreign policy. A good half of the Reason crowd were pro-war, some ambivalent, and a powerful minority within the Cato Institute rallied to the cause of “liberating” Iraq, or was at least sympathetic to the idea of “exporting” free market liberalism at gunpoint, once the war was a fait accompli. Reason itself took no position on the most important question of the day, I’m told because of the influence of big contributors. And now I learn, from inside sources, that Reason senior editor Brian Doherty, author of the monumental Radicals for Capitalism, a “freewheeling” history of the American libertarian movement, is in danger of being fired because he’s too pro-Paul

My take is that on the whole, they are not all that bad. What's bad, is Reason not standing behind it's name. Instead of putting the quotes in context, Reason chose to run with the, "look at this out of context quote", "and this one too".

Is the rhetoric worthy? Probably not. And yet there is no condemnation by Reason for Kirchick's blatant smear attempt, that pursues a dishonest agenda with claims of rascism, homophobia and anti-semitism.

Please don't waste our time with "tried to be fair". You either were fair or not.

I hope Reason understands how much it has lost with this, the effect it will have on it's reputation going forward. You're not TNR, or the WSJ. You "claim" to represent a different perspective, and yet when the articles are weighed and measured, there was no significant difference between your magazine's coverage and the MSM, except maybe the lame attempt to insulate Reason's groupthink of soft and convenient libertarianism.

You probably wouldn't even be here today, if you weren't fully aware of the backlash from people with a libertarian ideology. Something tells me, that after all of the distancing and self-righteousness, Reason looked around and realized that the clapping in the auditorium was from the few statists in the balconies.

Bravo! Bravissimo! as the crowd hisses in disgust

Perhaps the disconnect will sink in now. The majority of those with a libertarian streak aren't concerned with being libertine, but actually preserving the opportunity for freedom against the forces of tyranny even if it means fighting tooth and nail.

Fair. A funny and subjective word to use. Shame you didn't choose "honest".

This campaign is about heroes, not cowards. Reply back if you need help finding the Log Out link.